


A Winter by degree,

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: Madness Season [1]
Category: Star Fox Command, Star Fox Series
Genre: Dark!Star Wolf, Drug Use, Frictions between needs of indivivual and a society, Gen, Genetic Disorders & Abnormalities, He also has a child, Heaven help her, Leon focus, Leon is a clinical sadist, Madness, Mutilation, Psychological Scars, Racism, Self Medicating, Star Wolf focus, Terrorism, Torture, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2017-12-17 17:56:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first tale in the Madness Season Series.</p><p>Because madness wasn't a state of mind, but rather a season without end.  They weathered it, as all broken things do, barely.  This is that Season's Winter, spied through slitted eyes.  It was cold, this artificial arctic between stars, it's only mercy was that when you closed your eyes and looked just right, there was no light.</p><p>Precedes/intersects with the upcoming novel "Something Like Euthanasia"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 60 degrees

**Author's Note:**

> To be edited hopefully to chapter 4 by 1/12/14 and be completed by the 20th of the same month.
> 
> The original contents of the "Madness Season" (Misspelled as "maddness season" under my old ff account, winces, having lost my password I cant' go back.. not that I'd want to... but still 'tis irritating) contained the story "By Degree" and "The Willing" both Dark!StarWolf tales. These tales are going to be edited then divided into different story tabs under a "Madness Season" series. They will in content be the same, merely edited for clarity and spell check.
> 
> Though somewhat AU, the tales in the series run from SF 64 to Command, treating much of the events of all the games like canon. Planet names/character names/descriptions/ and all other factors that have been altered throughout the series' ever changing continuity will be dictated by the most recent of the Starfox installments, unless the older models are too tempting to pass up.
> 
> Present focus though is pre-Adventures post SF 64.
> 
> Present stories for this part of the series;
> 
> "By degree" (Leon past focus, set pre games) -complete but needs to be edited-  
> "Skittles" (post-Assult, pre-Adventures) -rd halfway done-  
> others pending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited 1/9/14 for grammatical purposes, minimal changes to text for clarity reasons.

Maddness Season

By Degree: Intro: 60 flat.

_Per the Cornerian constitute all public locations must make accommodations for all species. (Ie: Ex: In consideration of those born with cold blood a room must be left at 85 degree_ _Fahrenheit)_

_Cornerian multi specie coexistent act: page 1, paragraph 2._

Mercury crept up like a tide, a thread of fire, always striving forward and up, but slowly, like a tepid tragedy that the furless apes called soap opera it crawled, the leading edge folding amongst itself on during its decent.

From dream to waking, to the waking dream, he slid through the currents of his life while the cold stole the edge of his thoughts and his claws lost their edge as they groped steal wall.  There was much flailing in him seeking to make the thread of quicksilver live up to its name.

But in one’s death throes… such was expected.

 

 “No, please!" Rough dexterous paws closed over his wrists, and though he winced from the contact it galvanized his desperation. Hate and love were ever a potent blend for him. "Don't!"

He struggled forward, those hands with their course pads held him back. Satisfied when he went still, comforted by the delusion that he was secure one of his assailants let go.  Had the gall to step past him.  Clumsy clambering as well as a hellish racket marked the creature’s path, it’s goal was obvious, the thin beam of light-

The only light he'd dared permit!

-and by this light he saw.

Elongated muzzles choked with fur, seamless blue uniforms with Cornerian insignias, the glint of polished copper to tell of to military-civilian rank.

His mouth parted in distaste at such snippets were acquired and their unwelcome revelation of “who” was tallied. Fangs bared, the hiss that escaped him was unavoidable. In response to his "hostility" the beast to his back tightened its grip, never knowing the inferno that pressure and warm blood meant for his type. He hissed a second time, this time in pain. The scent and heat, the miasma of hair muddled by poor grooming and “civilized” hair additives… the input was making his stomach writhe. But his discomfort was nothing compared to the festering pain of rising panic.

Emotion so violent it must be contained swelled and stirred within, pressing against the walls of his reason and caressed and crushed his vitals turn by acid inducing turn.

Light, fickle thing it was, glinted of the steel hued snout of a blaster.  The weapon was first bared at him, and to that threat he went still. Still, his heart, ever traitorous thing it was had lurched forward full speed when the weapon was turned away. Looking past the muzzle, in the gloom of his subterranean lair he couldn't see, a gift of a glint of light on steel's edge and angles and hap stance.

Blinding was a little thing, all things considered. He could sense intent by scent, motion by how the heat was disturbed just so, and the compilation of those gifts beyond sight caused him to fight for what little he was worth.

"No, she's just hatched, less than an hour old..." He screeched in response to the interloper’s whuff of disgust. "You... you can't just shoot her!"

Such was his desperation that he threw both himself and his captor forward a few steps. With a growl to his back as warning he was wheeled back beyond any hope of having an impact. The figure, once illuminated by the thread of light, ducked back into the dark, going deeper into the den. He caught glimpses as the things moved about. Fleshy fur draped features, wet watering eyes, than nothing save an outline cast in hot reds and oranges as he ditched even a facsimile of sight and sought the infrared.

Still... the recalled details of a seeing ago, cycled thought the worthless facts even as he twisted and tried both patience and restraints.

A long snout with a black nosed tip.

Flesh that dripped down the muzzle due to a surplus of epidermis' growth.

A yellow fang tip poking out from one exuberant fold.

Fur the color of brittle wood, so short it gave the illusion of being frizzed, no static electricity required.

 _That_ one went forth, nostrils' whuffing in disgust as he searched and found her.

The beast burned without flame or blaster, such was the creature that strolled into the dark that wasn't dark for the inhabitants, snarling small minded complaints about gloom and cold and the like.

Finally, he found her, a one sided game of hide and seek that wasn’t.  Heat embraced a mewing cool. And that chill, _living_ , being let out a squeal of agony as it was engulfed in a furred inferno.

Those of hot blood never considered those of cool. Their heat was a discomfort, at times a pain. Helpless he quaked in this captivity; letting out noise's too primal to be words.

Chance changed hands, and suddenly one moment he was bound, the other he was free.  Free and moving forward, oblivious to the red morass that was behind.  Her screams calling him forward, he had to make them see... see reason... He reached out, clawed hands grouping...

Only to find he was gripping the wall. His last reach missing the thermostat by inches. Vision blurring and breath burning as the infernal cold sucked down drafts of heat. Still, though it was a miss, his arm grazed the device, the cuff of his sleeve caught the piffs and caused the wheel to spin and the numbers to crawl up.

Too slow, he moaned, awakening from the protracted remembrance like another would wake from a nightmare and found the demons waiting. Too slow, too soon, too quick, too much, too soon-

His eyes rolled back and he slumped forward.

The last vision was of numbers, sixty degrees became sixty one, sixty two...

Jaws gapped wide, sucking down drafts of chill and lethargy in equal dosses, he lifted a black claw to the dim florescent lighting above. A thunk, than there was light, all to better chase back the black that was chasing after his eye and closing, closer, caught.

Above, a world away, the thermoset wheel wheezed as it chased itself, the numbers whirling towards some numeric acme, some peak clad in digits that better cloaked survival.

Oblivious, he fell.


	2. 60 degrees and crawling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 1/9/14.

Maddness Season

By Degree: Descent...

_"Who needs 'em, claws and fangs and all? We ain't animals or nothin'... So I ask you one and all... who needs those beastie bit? And more importantly to those with the gall to argue it ain't "natural"... Why do you need 'em in the first place? We're Cornerian's for God's sake, and we live in a time of peace, civility, and civilization. Didn't they tell you that when you got here?"_

_Anti-Venom propagandist speaking to an anti-declaw organization._

The lay half awake, phantom warmth nudging his scales, making his eyes move though they watered and burned. Each breath came out as a dry rasp, and though they were in motion there was nothing of focus to his ocular wanderings. White light became white bound hands, which in turn morphed once more.

A phantom, she bore wounded digits, the claws removed and part of the bone below the claw as well.

No surgery was perfect, no matter how much the Cornerians had foresworn to forsake the barbarity as medical malpractice.

Not daring to close his eyes he shifted his point of focus instead.

The ghost with its white hand followed him, never mind he looked two places at one...

Those hands, the phantoms, weren’t his, but another’s. Another pair of hands. The similarity betweemn theres and his took hellishly long for him to differenciate it.  But there was ice in his head, stilling the snap of synapsis in his mind.  They’d just have to understand…

Scaled like his, smaller, yes, covered in petite fir-green plates like his. He smiled at the similarity without knowing why. From wrist to knuckle such went patterning and size the lot was long and delicate, and always a touch chill.

But were nothing like his chill, this burning, deathly cold…

Something like panic should be yammering in him, but all he felt was numb.  Thus, numbly, he observed.

From knuckle up, under a swath of bandages... there was a tantalizing scent and taste on the air. A biter aroma that alluded to the blood under those wrappings. Reaching out as he had years ago, he moved to cradle those hands in his own, a sympathetic "hiss" escaping his lipless mouth.

"Who?"

"They... they didn't fit. Uncle Laz and Auntie said that claws don't fit, aren't civilized."

His head spun, though decades old the revelation that wasn’t made his knees buckle as they had then.  Still he’d cradled while he fell, tenderly shielded what was beyond repair even as his world and gravity dragged him down. Reality clicked then, when knees hit steel of black instead of grey. The cold would drag him down into unconscious again, this haze of remembrance was a precursor and would paralyze him until he’d bleed out the last of his heat.

Still, despite knowing, he didn’t let go. Couldn’t. Memories clanged against the walls of his control with iron hands got him to get up, from fetal position to kneeling. Blinking, he focused on the now, recalled this room, his, even as he held a span between his hands that weren’t as cold as the world about him. Tongue recalled, unrealized how he’d let it loll, he swiped and moistened eyes gone dry in this artifice, air all the while rattling off reassurances that he pain shouldn’t last too long.

 And even as he nattered he reached for the wall and pushed up.

His shaking limbs would not support, the world went grey… was whiting... there was frost on the walls...

I’m going to die.

The realization had no fear for him, only an undercurrent of frustration.

"I expected as much since the war started." She carried on, as always dispassionate in her pain.  Only a faint reptilian lisp to her words and the scales on her skin proclaimed her race. She could have been one of the barking Cornerian dog her accent was so bad. He would have scowled, should have rebuked, but her wounds stood between them. So fresh and raw they cut a red line between himself and his anger. This once, he'd forgive...

But he'd never forget.

She flicked her tail, as if swatting something nauseating to the side, and to that proper show of reptilian sentiment he smirked, just a little.

While she explained the cycle, propaganda to excite, than laws to conform, he folded the paper she had given him. Having opened and perused its contents he let his graceful hands gently refold the pamphlet. So precise his touch and pressure that the whole didn't look to have been opened. He was dressed as always, long trench coat and sharp angled hat obscuring the fin atop his head. Tan was the color of the day, the color of Titania dust caught in an immaculate corner. His scales, sensing the color of his attire, had tinted themselves just so. It took years of practice and careful regard to hue to make them transcend mere matching to compliment, the fact that his hide was not at war with his garments like hers was ever a point of style in his book.  She, ever canny to his games, rolled her eyelids up, a backward squint that was part glare, part exasperation, and only their association made the gesture fond.

His counter, to her emoting, was none at all.  He coiled while still. Coiling for such as him was quite the feat.  Having been the trademark definition of lengthy, long, tall, and scrawny, posture was a joke, good posture a worse one.  So he reclined, knee bent so that the chairs edge was gripped by his bared claws - he scorned Corneria's shoe fetish with all his scaled sole- the other was stretch until if took up… if not all  than most of a tile.  The floor was chill and white, his foot unintentionally made effort to match.  As did his knee which blended with paper when the paper lightly smacked it as he thought over what he’d read well that was an accident of oversight.  A more benign one.

Both were familiar with the more malicious ones thus both did not speak of them.

The long black claws of his feet clicked at random intervals, a two toned melody, the upper most notes got a withering glare as he scared her chair and was unrepentant for the damages.

"I'm not getting declawed, if that's what you're asking." He hissed at last, breaking for her what was likely an uncomfortable silence.

"No. I just..." her slit pupils flicked from inanimate object to inanimate object, never looking at him. He flicked his tongue out, and nodded, satisfied that there was no dry scent of fear about her.

If there had been, with that scent of blood, he wouldn't have been able to control himself, much to their mutual sorrow.

Luckily, for now, they were spared such things.

"Corneria isn't the only place that's pushing these laws, Leon. Katrina, Macbeth, it’s part of an anti-Venom propaganda campaign."

Taking in the fact, distantly given, dully noted, he nodded his head.

"Sssoundsss like Lylat's getting antsy." He flicked his tongue out, as if he were going to snap up all the "ants" for a quick dinner. She gurgled, as he hoped she would. Pain forgotten in a reptilian giggle. "I promise that my associates and I shall exercise utmost care."

Having no lips to curl, no tears to cry they compromised. Such as it was those as they were they worked around the inconvenience of facial expressions. A tilt of head conveyed amusement, the meeting of gazes alluded to affection. Both a tilt and gaze came his way. And to both expressions he offered unblinking scrutiny.

"What's so amusssing, young one?"

"You." She answered.

"Then," Taking hat from its perch upon his knee he set it over his fin, cocking it at a roguish angle, "I've done well."

She flicked her tongue out, a gesture of rudeness amongst the canine minded. To the reptilian it was merely a gesture off partaking between two familiar with one another. She drew his scent and taste, and then turned on clawless feet to leave. Her heat and scent lingered though she was gone, and he was too much of a gentleman to taste the departed.

Reaching beyond the ghosts, beyond the recollection, he grasped the wall. Wall of steal, poor quality that as it crumbled under his claws. With a hiss and grunt he drew close, knees skidding against the steel flooring as he pulled himself in. With shaking hands and scrabbling claws, and frantic, frenetic, struggled he managed to get enough leeway to stand. One foot, quaking and jerky was his foundation. Victory was victory however, and never mind if it wasn't a stable one. He pushed up, and held, and though he wobbled like all hell he was up.

Blinking glassy eyes he stared uncomprehendingly into his own reflection for the longest time. Beyond the green-grey smear that was his scales made compact by a tiny bar of glass serving as his view in he strained to look past the green. Underneath the colors lay a series of black bars, it took a long moment before his mind could understand that the lines he was seeing were in fact numbers. The wheel with its claw friendly grooves spun round and round, by them it should have been an obscenely high degree, scalding even. Seeking silver, he found and for searching he saw.

The actual degree of the room, the present temperature, was going down.

He’d seen faster flaming Wolfen’s fall, and it wasn’t this fast.

"Shit."

His breath didn't frost the glass, not yet, but it didn't steam the air, indicating that his heat stores were that low. That idle oath might very well be his dying rasp.

Forgoing dignity he set one shaking hand down into the depths of his coat pocket, fishing for his com-link.

Meant too, wanted too… But her hands… Still he held them… all white and warm, made warm by touch and familiar… so familiar.

He needed… pocket… needed and couldn't, and he had to get it on because if he didn’t (and if they didn’t, come that was), he knew he was a dead lizard. No doubts there, only certainty.

Thirty six, he mused, as shaking claws closed over hers, an apology rising in his throat for pressure and blood, and all those familiar hollow promises how it’d never again, never be hers (he’d kept part of it, not hers, but there’s always _always_ there’s…).  She smiled to the idiocy of it all, smiled as she always had, baring a bit of fang, because she wasn’t so far gone to have filed the lot down.

“Cold…”

_"Aren't you always?"_

She let go, stepped back and let go and he blinked.

Alone…

No one there, but with a link in his hand, flickering feebly, or maybe that was his sight.  But it was on, hopefully, mercifully, it might be.

Like all mercies it was an uncertainty.

Still he lifted it, tried for speaking, and wondered where he’d fail in this mad attempt to avoid the inevitable.


	3. Depths

Madness Season

By Degree: Depths...

_"'Enthusiasm lisps eternal internal?'" What the Hell?"_

_A common canine sentiment to an odd Reptilian bit of prose that's in popular circulation._

Such was the dictates of the Reptilian heart. Not of love, lust, or passion, as was the crux of Mammalian prose, in that the Reptilian were radically different.  Chillingly so. Enthusiasm... or rather emoting... was for the scaled souls highlighted by hisses and croaks. It was a pale reflection of what was happening within. Innards would boil, toil, and churn at the slightest provocation, hence the savage, crude, sounds that marked an emotional display. Sometimes, though rare in his specie, these sensations were exaggerated from mere discomfort and agony and crossed the threshold of true illness. Ironic, really. Mundane yet lethal, so minor and miniscule... Merely living life and responding to stimuli those over sensitive guided themselves to an early grave. The various vital systems were in constant conflict, over stimulated one moment, under stimulated the next. In retrospect, the poets saying of "at war with yourself" was proven true. For in the darkest levels battles were waged but never won.

And, as it is with all wars, there were no victors. And in this war of the self you never won, you just earned a protracted defeat.

An early death all but guaranteed, spoke the experts. Looking up at him shrouded in white coats that were made celestial by stray beams of light and set to glowing, thus attired they damned him. Sympathies were tendered, wills proposed than discarded as he’d left in a snit.  Refusing to accept, denial they called it, he’d had other words, words he’d taught them, one gash at a time. He'd gone through the legal routes until they were all worn out, then in spite defied prognosis and system, carving a path unmarked with ethics and scrawled in scars. He lived and learned, as all were supposed to.

Though unorthodox, the bulk of his beginning training picked up by vivisection, he mastered the structural and mechanics of his specie and of others by trial and error. As for medicine he simply altered what he had.  Twisted chemistry into bio chem, then went from there to bio manipulations, he’d found the “why” that had haunted him since diagnosis between banned books and was more horrified that no one had tried to fix what was flawed.  The naturalistic, thinning of the numbers had no excuse here, and the texts had provided him with no alternatives.  Hardly satisfied he forsook simple answers, knocked on the doors of genetic engineering, against the very doors of the damned if popular opinion was to be believed.  Indifferent to propaganda he studied mutilation and somewhere between that and drugs of a less than legal bent found ways first to slow, than stop the detrition that lay in the very proteins which were his own foundation.

And, as outré as his learning, his "meds", he mastered himself with a regimen of carefully scheduled drug cocktails and venoms.

Never mind half his means were illegal, he was beyond the law by then.

He dosed himself, to hell with the ends, means, or ethics of it all. Such considerations were for the soft skinned, the pathetic, and he was beyond them all. A trail of raised scales ran from wrist to elbow was the mark of his disdain. A scaled span that was discolored and grew in discolored after each shed.  They never never changed in hue though the scales about them could. Eternally pea green, the streaks raised no questions amongst his co-workers and that's all that mattered.

 

XXXX(tend to the below, all above is finished.)

Having gnawed his black tipped claws to bloody stubs he nipped and nibbled on one rather thick pea-green line of scales.

_First injection site of a first dose from what felt like a lifetime ago.  His hands shook that once upon a time ago, so much so he'd jarred the needle and ripped up length of scales.  How he’d screeched and yelped at the pain… When amused he'd stare at the length in detached scorn, recalling the person he’d been, how weak… but he was beyond such petty amusement today..._

Two other cold-bloods paced and gribbited in front of him. Their soft skins slick with perspiration, giving them a fresh from the pond look.  Like everything else in this barren steel and chaired room they radiated of chemical cleanser, enough so that keeping his tongue behind his fangs was a must.  The hiss he indulged was entirely recreational however.

Still, though the creatures were repugnant his own exercise in crunching off his epidermis one layer at a time was equally unsettling.  Still he had excuses aplenty and if asked could rattle them off without a thought. He was nervous, hadn’t been this shaken since his lone vigil over his egg. Recalling how _that_ stint had ended he crunched down too hard and was rewarded with the bitter, chill taste of his own blood. The frogs weren’t completely taste dead, they scented the blood, and while the wiser of the pair shrank away from him the stupider of the pair turned to him, bulbous face twitching in shock and horror.

That still did not stop the thing from approaching however.

"Sir!" -The swollen neck bulge shriveled amongst itself even as the eyes bugged twice their size- "You... You're bleeding!"

"Ssst!"

He reared his head back, his eyes blinking rapidly with a series of dry near soundless "clicks". A rim of his own blood hung around the tip of his snout, a macabre lipstick. To that sight the amphibian crept back, stretching one absurdly long leg behind the other in its not-so-subtle retreat. The swell of its throat was shriveled and twisted, its eyes never deviating from the sight of its horror.

For through bloody faced Leon smiled, had too…

The moment, the tension, that dark “could of ben” was broke by the opening of double doors.

They swung open, soundless but not scentless. Taking a draft of air out of habit, he was rewarded by the bitter tinge of sterilization. To that "reward" he almost gagged, his black dark eyes rolled back, and he fought a faint.

But that was more from anxieties than disgust, digging his claws into the arms of his chair in the nearly empty waiting room he let his eyes loll, waited for the fit to pass...

When it cleared he was alone, save for one.

"Camilla." He rasped, twisting to his feet. "The doctor..."

Both eyes locked on his, black slits so like his own...

"Aunt and Uncle are in the back, talking to the doct... The doct..." The rest came out as a forced hiss, and to that he did nothing.

Staring blankly ahead the young lizard said nothing and neither did he. Some considerate warm blood -a rabbit he noted dully- guided the young reptile to a seat besides his. Perhaps seeing him as "a friend" she smiled, baring bucked teeth to the world before wordlessly leaving.

Small, svelt, sleek, with only a faint grey cast to her scales to proclaim to the world how sick she was Camilla stood statue still. The girl's adopted family was out of the room by now, listening to a doctor talk of wills, and total system collapse, of the inevitable system failure...

He wondered, if like his own, her own “parents” were contemplating a padded room, a cell with no stimulants, to maximize life expectancy.

Twisting to his feet, taking her clawless tortured hands in his own he trilled low in his throat, a wordless note of pure empathy, sympathy. All the things that should only affect the warm blooded, or so he was told...

With a soft "scree" of agony she crumpled and he held on tight, be damned if he'd ever let go.

Holding tight, the edges bit and burned, just like his vision blurred. Still, he fought on, pulled on the com-link, turning it on. Its edges spit starlets of sparks, hating the cold like he did they protested with more vigor that he could ever lay claim too.

"Wolf." He croaked. "Get down to my quarters, now!"

For the second time that day -and not the last, never the last not in this life- Leon lost track of the world for a while.


	4. Cold Burn

Madness Season

By Degree: Cold Burn

 

"It's something to do with the Reptilian brain sir. Something... unevolved... innately unbalanced. Not as a whole, but just a select few. Mammals as a whole have outgrown and surpassed thier primal instincts... but Reptiles... We just don't know how they tick... You understand, sir, it's always in them and near the surface. This ugly, bitter, part that loves the pain, gets off on the agony. We couldn't think of any other way to _deal_ with it"

Sargent Bill Grey to General Pepper; dispatch received after Star Wolf's capture when humanitarian protests arose when details about the detainment of prisoner Leon P. leaked. It was later revealed and confirmed to the public that Leon was set in a cold locker for hours at a time to keep him placid.

_It fell before he did, sliding through limp, clawed fingers to strike at the steel floor. With a click and a clatter the com-link fell away. His breath, while it couldn't steam, clogged in his throat and set him to panting. The moisture of what the poets called "the breath of life" becoming a cloying mist that slowly but surely was asphyxiating him. Weary, of the last, he closed glassy eyes; the fight just didn't seem worthwhile anymore._

Life was gauged by measures so strict that to deviate by a dose or an ounce was to die. He'd taught her the doses, and the methods of dosing and she was apt, able, and willing. Once of his blood was not one who was encumbered with the tainted skein of "morals" that the Cornerians slapped over their instincts of self-preservation. She held no regards for what the warm blooded dubbed "laws" and "civilization", seeing the foolery and hypocrisy under the pretty coating.

The war wore one, and time passed, time and distance, as the missions become more covert and the space front more heated. Resistance rose its damned head, but he endured, and from time to time dared a visit or two.

They made a jest of it on one of those rare times when the fighting had been light and close and the security mutts that Corneria had inflicted on her were easy to dispose of... Hypocrites, he'd dubbed them, and she who shared his name, the name of Powalski, had nodded her scaled head wisely. She was always watched, the dour dogs of Corneria may preach freedom but they never acted on it, were all bark and no bite. So he had said and so she agreed even as he immersed the bodies in acid and she watched on, untouched by what others would have thought as violating the honored dead.

The dead reeked, tainted the air and a questing tongue with their decomposing. Much better to just destroy the carrion and air out the place after.

To avoid redundancy she had paced along her lab, paiusing in her wanderings to open this window and that vent, the summer air was hot, tainted with the taste of pollutants, but a virtually unindustrialized oasis to the taste buds when compared to Venom.

He flicked his tongue out, taking in the taste and texture even as he folded his lanky frame on the three legged stool -lab variety, stainless steel, without the annoying cushion for the backside favored by Canines and Avians- as his own. His scales grew glossy and bright about his ankles and knees, almost silver and sheen, looking down at once of his feet he clicked his tongue amongst his fangs in a quiet chuckle. Pointing to a span of scales on his left ankle he indicated that she had missed a spot, to that she indulged a gurgling hiss.

"You are meticulous in execution... on matters of cleanliness of course." She noted archly, head tilted to the side.

"Of coursssse." He blinked, how own head tilted to the side. "How isss buissnesss?"

"Slow." She spoke in a clipped Cornerian accent despite how it irritated him; they would have to... _talk_ about that someday soon. "I was pulled from bio-weapon research due to the scandal that my last name raised."

He blinked, rolled his head with a series of little jerky ticks that were slow in straightening but wonderful for that crick behind his skull fin.

"Since the bio-weapons fiasco I have been shuffled from every branch of the "bio" sciences, at last being put in organic fuel production and development."

No need to flick his tongue out to taste the air now. Her bitterness was so strong and acidic it seeped past his lipless mouth to tease his tongue all on its own. Neck slightly bent the angle of his snout askew, he considered her, and at last blinked.

"I of course, would happily offer my servicesss to one so disstressed..."

She shook he head, another Canine mannerism. Clearly Corneria was tainting her. When Venom took over Lylat he resolved to have her relocated as soon as possible. But that was in the future, for now, he would be content knowing that despite her unhappiness she was fine. It was an unhappiness she was inflecting on herself of course, and therefore it was ineffable to broach. There was some logic behind it he supposed, but perhaps torture had left his own reasoning... _skewed_. He never pried, never asked the obvious, the "why" she endured such small unhappiness's, why she almost always stilled his hand whenever he offered his... unique services to her problems.

"Father."

He hissed, a warning, and to that wordless rebuke she went quiet. Old lessons pounded into her skull through, scales and skin leaving a meshwork of scars when some Pro Cornerian radical had overheard and acted... That experience hung between them and had left scars on them both. Unsaid, unsayable, it had become the dictate of both their lives. Never _say_ that, never _breathe_ it, never _think_ it. Powalski had no children, not now, and any allusions to theotherwise were most unwise.

Truly, it was terrorfying how one word damned them both, not only because of the sentiment it aroused in him _-such a deadly, precious, feeling. It broke controls sacred, releasing the beast and saint out all at once and the wars they waged were apocalyptic-_ but the consequences of if _others_ heard it. Such a dire consequence went beyond thinking, as the mere contemplation of what might be raised the beasts from graves and set them to mad howling without invitation.

It was the Monster that stared through his eyes, looked down at her and set the black slit that was the center of his eyes to a sick shaking, a vile gleaming. His breath hissed through his fangs and the tensions of his muscles eased all at once making each motion liquid malice. He unwound then, stood, looking down at her from those hellish eyes.

"Excise that word from your vocabulary, Camilla."

Rebuked, she nodded. Not enough, too doggish. As clipped as any Cornerian yapper he said the last, leaning over the table that separated them until their snouts were all but touching.

"You will do so or I'll do it for you."

She shivered, and the taint of her terror filled his mouth.

Sucking down the draft he snapped his jaws shut and turned on his heel. _Have to leave_ , his reason hissed, scraping on the dry detachment that was his thoughts. _Have to leave now_. Now, before she could show any other Cornerian weaknesses to him, for in his present mood he wouldn't endure them.

Much to their mutual sorrow.

She'd be fine. Like him she sported degrees in non-traditional medicine, the degree was scrawled on their very scales.

She'd be fine.

Confident he left, confident he'd flown. Even during the worse of the war he dosed than flown. Confident, knowing that like he, she would do whatever needed to be done. Assured by her cool head and cooler blood he had been confident she'd be alright.

He never through of consequences of a blockade, having been on the "winning side" from the start. Then come the StarFoxs, with their Arwings dipped in the color of stars. Then came Fichina, a final victory, a final ruin... After the events of a dogfight gone wrong then came the snout aching impact as his needs met a blockade. Materials stopped coming in, he scrambled to find substitutes, gambling his very life for one more day.

_Drip, drip._

_A bead of fire caressed him._

_From snout tip to jaw it drizzled down like lava on pallid, frosting, scales..._

Liquid poured in a syringe, thrown down his elixir clasped in capsule form never mind the impurities, he gambled with his life on an elixir of continued life. And in some ways he failed, becoming frailer by trials end. Desperation made him thread out medicine and means until the very end. Then the pressure had eased, the blockade had broken not by anticipated victory but by inglorious defeat.

At wars end he had been freed of obligation so he had spent a few precious days restocking than he had faded away, living up to his inborn ability as a Chameleon to disappear. Leon had slipped a span of space made choppy by antagonism and animosity with the ease of shedding one's skin... And at long last he had returned to Corneria, returned to _her_ home.

He found it invaded, desecrated by the warm blooded mutts he had grown to despise.

Not satisfied with the answer of "I don't know" he had shown them -the whole family of interlopers- his displeasure and gone hunting.

The paper trail was an awkward one, No artful evasions and sly maneuverings, merely screens of quantity. He endured however, being pressed by a drive a desperation poorly associated with the calm, collected facade he held up for the world to see.

One article, paste and clipped and stored, about a nameless Lizard found dead from drug overdose held his answer. Time of death, two months before war's end. The cops statistic heavy stance and anticipated anti-drug speech had been the irrelevant content, and at speech's end the case had been closed. Only he wondered, knowing what he knew, and after satiating his curiosity approached the Laz's.

Their lack of sympathy or care had been most... disquieting... and he had acted appropriately due to the circumstances of his grief.

He'd burned them alive, trapping them in their house while it burned. He'd been marked as an arsonist, a murderous one, and bore another black mark on Corneria's exceedingly long list of his sins.

_"No stimulus... no response... heartbeats slow, can barely feel it despite..."_

_Words and meaning faded in and out, in a place behind the blackness of his vision where the dark breathed. He lay amongst the still dark, unfeeling, untouched._

_Then, a cruel blade sheared through the black, it's edge a voice. That voice held no passion, no inflection. "Immerse him."_

_"Sir, that'll kill..."_

_"Do it! Damn your tailless, lack wit, hide! I gave an order and I_ will _be obeyed!"_

Idly, upon leaving he had wondered how it felt to die by fire. Professional curiosity mind. How long did it take for the nerves to over stimulate and shut down? When the epidermis peeled off, was it pain or the realization of what was lacked that drew the screams from those salvaged from a fire? And, semantics, time, how long did it take for the smoke to clog airways and take the focus off of the fact you were boiling in your own blood?

_His questions were answered, in the rudest way possible. He screamed, a soundless reptile screech, black claws scrabbling at the dark, damning those who caused him such pain to in the least; share a fraction of the agony with him._

_The end, when it came, answered one of his questions. Death by fire, pain born of flame, did not stop fast enough._


	5. By Degree: Epilogue: The Boiling Point

By Degree: Epilogue: The Boiling Point

 

_"The approximate boiling temperature for water is 100 degrees."_

"Yer no princess and I ain't no prince, so get your shit together Leon, we need to jet."

Silence met the statement, grim angry silence if he was any judge. Still, there was no motion to his barb. Well, no _significant_ motion. The eyes were open and flicking here and there, the chest was rising up and down, all the vital signs were up and running but no one was home.

_Lights on though, so someone's home, no one's answering though._

Clearing his throat, Wolf O' Donnell shifted closer to the lone, sprawled, figure. Leon's reptilian frame was swathed in a mix match of blankets and heating pads. Breakfast and lunch lay in plates by the Lizard's head, some dim Monkey's hope that the smell of food would bring the Lizard back to his senses a little quicker. Daring hell and worse Wolf padded along his friend's cot, picking up the plates and dumping the contents in a nearby trash bin.

To that the form twitched, one eye rolled up to consider him.

"You weren't hungry anyway."

A blink, considering Leon that would have been a nod from anyone else, to that he smiled, showed a glint of fang.

"Basssstard."

"You wanna eat? You pull yourself up and you order some food for yourself." Wolf growled, turning on his heel the star fighter padded out, his tail a swish. "Mess hall's where it normally is, you're smart, you'll find it."

Jaws gapped open, framed by the door Wolf waited; they clicked open and closed for a second. After a few fish gaps had passed Leon croaked out a few sounds that were clearly meant to be words, yet fell pathetically short of enunciation. Less than coherent more than battered, but not at deaths' door Leon fought to speak, and through words failed him the meaning was clear as was the hostility. Cheered by that, Wolf let his ears rise just a bit, first bit of perk to them in almost five days since the... incident. His tail stilled suddenly as if it were weighed down with the memories. Shaking his head like he'd shake off a dribble of chill water Wolf O' Donnell dropped smile, fake cheer, and answered all in one move.

"What in hell happened? Better ask what the hell _didn't_." Wolf growled. "Mutiny Leon, we were screwed and then some. Pigma snapped, lost a few bolts too many and tried to bump you off. Hell, he tried to bump _all_ of us off. Screwed royal with the life maintenance systems in Sargasso all over base. We got a whole damn crescent de-oyxed due to the air lock trap he set, your area and a few nearby rooms were dropped to below freezing and a large chunk of the rations were... are poisoned."

Silence, then the mouth snapped shut and both eyes flicked to him, perhaps taking in the tattered state of Wolf's uniform or the droop of the whiskers along his snout or some other lizard status sensing skill that only Leon could lay claim to, but he saw how ragged Wolf was running. Not much left, to Wolf or to him, the Canine's hands were shaking and he slumped leaning against the side of the door that stood open.

"When you're up to walking I need you down at supply. We need someone competent to check the chow over; I did a quick scan but... I don't know what's bad or not. We lost some men with me learning that." A shrug, it came forced and was followed by a soft, hate filled snarl. "Whatever the bastard used on us is tasteless though, I know that considering my screw up and the fact _I_ got a small dose myself." Exhaling sharply, looking to the empty hall beyond Leon's room, Wolf shifted from paw to paw, claws going _clickity clack_ in the not-so shinny steel floor. "You pick a fucking good time to call, you know that?"

And with that, the closest to an apology Lord Wolf O' Donnell had ever gotten, he left leaving the lizard to wonder...

And to ache, each bone protested its existence, every scale felt scalded. The water must have been near boiling, but it's heat had brought him back from memory and from a one way trip to hell. Closing his eyes Leon sighed. For now, he wasn't getting up, he was too weak, too worn, to lift his head up. For now, he'd do nothing.

But only for now. His temper had been struck, this incident was fuel, and while the fire was but a spark for the moment it had plenty of fuel and hate was the hottest flame of them all. Curling upon himself, huddling to what little warmth exuded from his frame, Leon slid his tongue across the edge of his snout, never minding how the edge of his teeth left the sensitive organ red stripped by the time he licked the tip top of his nose.

There were a hundred ways you could kill a man, a hundred tortures so legends spoke to break a sentient to the level of a mere beast.

Before sleep took him, he decided in hate born detachment to try as many as "deaths" as he could on the Pig.

He slid from the world of the thinking to that of the dreaming on red tinged thoughts. As a soul might go to sea in olden times so did he. Letting the waves of blood draw him into the dark of unconscious he hardly bothered to look back on the glaring, gaudy, bone shores that had born him. The bitter taste of his own blood and the even more bitter metal tainted tinge -a ghost of the boiling water- replaced the scent of brine and salt in his dream. Unbothered, he slipped by into deeper and darker territories where one with a whole soul could not tread without being shattered and those who were shattered retreated to lick old wounds and rebind delusions so their glassy edges cut _just_ right.


End file.
